


It'll Be Alright

by violetpirate48



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons & Dragons Campaign, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetpirate48/pseuds/violetpirate48
Summary: After they save the Autumn Duke from Zease, the evil Kenku, Elijah notices Iodessa acting strangely. He wants to make sure she is okay, but he's never been much of a "people-person" and isn't sure how.
Relationships: Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s) & Original Dungeons & Dragons Character(s)





	It'll Be Alright

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cute moment from the D&D campaign I am in. I wrote it down to share it with more people because I thought it was precious. Please enjoy!

Despite Ivar’s insistence to the contrary, Elijah did not bow to the Archduke. He had confronted important people during his time as a pirate, and they were all the same. They tried to bargain their way out of captivity with money or threaten the pirates with their supposed power—though large sums of gold were a sure way to keep oneself alive in the midst of pirates.

Elijah listened to the Archduke for a bit, but once the Band was asked to deal with the Sahuagin problem, he knew they would agree and deemed the rest of the conversation unimportant. He glanced over at Iodessa, the only one of the group who had bowed to the Archduke, though she was one of his subjects. Maybe it was illegal for her not to bow. Was it illegal for the Band not to bow? Never mind. He didn’t care.

For the brief time Elijah had known Io, he had found her to be brave and generally unshaken by even the strangest of events. The gelatinous sewer blob currently held the top spot in Elijah’s list of strange things he had seen. Right now, however, Io did not seem herself. She kept her head low even when she was speaking, and her voice was subdued. If Elijah were a more perceptive person he would have realized that she was trying very hard to keep her voice from shaking. He didn’t quite get why Io might be sad, or scared, or whatever emotion that was that he couldn’t quite pick out since she had just saved her city from certain ruin.

Ivar fainted and fell quite ungracefully to the floor, jolting Elijah out of his rare bout of pondering. He caught the word “Annex” and assumed that the Archduke must have agreed to let Ivar into the Annex, possibly the Band as a whole. Elijah headed over to Ivar to make sure he wasn’t hurt. He came back to consciousness easily enough, and once the Archduke had gone he accepted Elijah’s offer of a sip of whiskey. He wasn’t sure why Ivar was trying to save face in front of the Archduke by not having a drink at noon when he had just fainted in front of him, but Elijah didn’t try to understand why Ivar did what he did.

The Band started making plans for what they were going to do until tomorrow when they would leave for Austrӧnd, but Elijah didn’t have much he needed, or even wanted, to do. If his brother hadn’t answered his letter, he would see him tomorrow. It looked like Veezara and Selva were going to the jeweler, but Elijah would rather stay away from there for as long as he lived. Mickey and Ivar decided to go ahead and use their newfound access to the Annex, but Elijah did not want to spend his free time doing research, especially when Ivar was there to annoy him with his nerdiness. Also, he didn’t read Elvish.

Elijah overheard Al and Io deciding to go to a tailor. Io still didn’t seem entirely okay, so when they left he decided to follow them. He didn’t try to be stealthy, so he was pretty sure they knew he was behind him, but they didn’t send him away. Once Al and Io arrived at the tailor’s shop and started talking to the tailor about whatever it was they were buying—shiftweave? It sounded very Al—Elijah stood awkwardly in the front of the shop, waiting for Io to be by herself.

Al finally left to go try on one of the tailor’s samples, and Elijah was left with Io.

“Io?” She turned to face him. “Um. . . When we were back at the Fall Court, you didn’t seem, um, like yourself. Are you. . . okay?” She let out a sigh.

“To be honest, no, not really. It’s just that some of the things we did today, I never thought. . .”

“You mean the illegal stuff?”

“Essentially, yes.” She paused for a second, Elijah assumed wondering if she should tell him what she was thinking. “When I brought that Capitan out of the air, and I saw her body was limp, I thought. . . I thought I had done that. It was only for a moment, but . . .”

Elijah stayed silent at first as she trailed off. He had understandably never been the person people would go to for comfort, and he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. “I’ve had some vaguely similar experiences. You don’t need to feel guilty or anything like that; it wasn’t your fault. It was definitely scary, but it wasn’t you, it. . . You don’t need to feel bad.” He had no idea if any of that was what she needed to hear,

“Yes, I know it wasn’t me. I . . . Thank you.” Elijah couldn’t exactly tell if he had been comforting at all. At first, he resisted the urge to pull Io into a hug, but then he remembered he had recently had a bath at the inn. A hug probably wouldn’t hurt.

Elijah took a step forward and put his arms around her. Io was so much smaller than Elijah that she was almost entirely enveloped by him. He kept the hug gentle so that she could leave if a hug from someone who was basically a stranger and had a very different moral code was not something she wanted, but she did not move away. Elijah pretended not to notice as her silent tears soaked into his shirtfront.

Later in Simi’s workshop, as Elijah again took his place awkwardly standing in the background, Io and her gnome friend were eagerly working to adjust her new firearm to fire underwater. With where the Band was headed next, Elijah was very glad they were making this modification. Simi cracked jokes and referred to old projects that he and Io had worked on together, and Elijah was relieved to see that she was laughing along with him. He knew she would be alright.


End file.
